


Gumshoe

by BlueRobinWrites



Series: The Music Made Me Do It [13]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: And he knows it now, Cormoran Strike Loves Robin Ellacott, F/M, Feelings, Inspired by Music, Penny & Sparrow, Troubled Blood Spoilers, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27129925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRobinWrites/pseuds/BlueRobinWrites
Summary: Cormoran is thinking of making a change.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Series: The Music Made Me Do It [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668514
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	Gumshoe

**Author's Note:**

> I've known that I wanted to write this fic for a long time. At least since I heard the song it's based on for the third or fourth time. But I hadn't been able to figure out quite where I wanted to go with it. 
> 
> I know it was a Strellacott song...but not quite how. 
> 
> Until this past weekend, while attending their virtual concert, the song sparked the fic that had apparently only been waiting for the events of Troubled Blood to transpire.
> 
> I'd highly recommend listening to the song at some point to really get the feel I was trying to achieve. But I'm sure you guys are tired of my obsession with these guys, so I'll forgive you if you don't. 
> 
> I fell in love with this song's vocabulary, and it was the song that sparked my conversation with Andy Baxter (the singer) concerning word banks (which I've talked about often in the Denmark Street Discord). So, in homage to the song, and my love of words, I've tried to work in as many of my word bank words as I could. I'm going to link their definitions, just in case you need them.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> This is [Gumshoe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jSTkw2lBis).

_I'm a gumshoe, what will I do_

_If your fingerprints are off me?_

_I'll go by another name, yeah_

_Can ya dig the way I change_

_Run amok, I may_

_Brag about the love that we both make_

_I can circumnavigate the way you change me_

_Slowly_

  
  


He was sure that she must be a magician. 

Even if she didn’t know it. 

In the space of four years she’d managed to innocently [inveigle](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/inveigle?s=t) him into changing things about himself that he’d never thought would change. 

Things he thought didn’t _need_ to change. 

Things he’d been adamant to himself would _never_ change. 

His self-containedness.

His refusal to speak love aloud. 

To anyone.

The barriers and blockades he’d employed in every relationship he’d had since leaving Charlotte. Including the relationships between him and his sister, his aunt and uncle, his closest friends, and even her, his partner. 

The day she’d arrived at the agency, a temp he’d been sure he’d cancelled, he’d realized that the fortifications he’d erected between him and everyone who was not Charlotte would need to be doubled for this girl. 

Better to be aloof. Guarded. Uninterested. Incurious. Objective. 

Her sapphire engagement ring had provided the second layer to his battlements, and he’d resolved to not even allow himself to look, even when he knew he’d not intended to touch anyway. 

However, those impediments he’d raised had started to erode almost immediately. His aloofness and hesitance to build a relationship with her had disappeared within the first month of her working with him. Within the first three weeks of her being at the agency he’d lowered his guard enough to talk to her about Charlotte and the “baby”. 

Granted, he’d been drunk. 

But there’d been countless times, over the years, when he’d been drunk around Ilsa and Nick or Polworth, or even Shanker, and he’d never said a word about anything Charlotte had done during the course of their relationship. Much less discuss the one thing she’d done that had pushed him to completely end their relationship. 

But, she was a nice person, his Robin. 

He’d sensed that within an hour of her arrival in his office. She was decent and kind and capable of blending seamlessly into his life. At first, professionally and then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, personally. 

He’d always been seen as surly and standoffish by people who didn’t know him well, and he’d liked it that way for the most part. But Robin, she’d hurtled over his walls as though she was an Olympic pole vaulter going for the gold. 

And he wasn’t even sure if she’d meant to. 

That was her [legerdemain](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/legerdemain#). This sleight of hand she’d somehow managed, the urge he felt to tell her things he wouldn’t tell someone else, with anyone else, would be seen as deception. 

But not Robin. 

She was too honest and open. Kind.

Four years later she had him becoming friends with their office manager who’d barked at him as though her name had been on the door instead of his, more often than not. Not to mention he’d found himself asking Hutchins and Barclay how their time off with their families had been recently. 

He’d never been interested before. 

At least not before Robin had stood on a dark street, nearly yelling at the top of her lungs, about his lack of self awareness and the ways she’d had to manage their lives as a result. 

And she’d been right. 

He’d realized recently that she’d been managing him almost the entire time they’d known each other, and she’d been doing it skillfully. 

She’d circumnavigated him so easily, so [adroitly](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/adroitly?s=t), that he’d not realized she’d been doing it until she’d shouted her disappointment down on his drunken head last Valentines Day, and he’d woken the next day _certain_ he had nothing to apologize for; only to realize, as the day had worn on with no communication from her—the one person he wanted to talk with most—that he did. 

She hadn’t been wrong. 

He’d been stunningly unaware, blissfully uncaring, and he’d liked it that way, until she’d showed him he didn’t. Until she’d lost the cool reserve and bone deep kindness with which she’d always treated him. And that he’d realized the next day, unprompted, that he’d taken excessively for granted. 

It had been the only time in the entire four years they’d known each other that he’d heard her raise her voice. 

The only time she’d ever been anything approaching [vituperative](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vituperate#). 

And as much as it had angered him at the time, drunk and barely able to stay upright, she’d been right. 

He’d been rude, uncommunicative, unfeeling, and disrespectful. Not just of her, though that had been the most grievous of his offenses, the crimes he’d committed against her; but toward anyone who truly cared about him, and the people he was supposed to care about. 

She’d flashed his reflection in front of him, a magic trick he’d never asked to see, and had revealed that the great gumshoe, Cormoran Strike, had been deceiving himself in ways no one else had ever managed to deceive him. 

All that reserve and aloofness had been a shield, keeping the world at arms reach.

Including the one person he’d slowly come to realize he wanted his arms around.

Realizing that had made the apology easy. 

The changes he’d started to implement had been more than worth it. 

And months later here they were, in a relationship, that _wasn’t_ an [ephemera](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ephemeral?s=t), like all of the others had been. 

Those brief and short term exchanges. 

The one night stands. 

Even the year he’d spent with Lorelei he’d scrupulously hidden his true self from her. He’d been content to manage their relationship like he could be deployed at any minute. 

No real emotion. 

Just physical gratification with a smattering of conversational enjoyment and the benefit of having someone to attend social gatherings with him.

He’d enjoyed Lorelei. He’d even liked her personally. But he’d never felt an urge to get closer to her. 

With Robin though, the relationship had quickly become one in which he’d relaxed and allowed himself to trust, because there’d been no other choice with her. 

He’d begun discovering her fingerprints all over everything good and worthy in his life after that Valentines Day row. 

The business he’d already known would have failed without her.

His relationship with Nick and Ilsa, which he’d thought had been strong and close and meaningful, had begun taking on a deeper and more authentic feel in the months since Robin had stayed with them after leaving her husband.

His relationship with his aunt, before she’d passed, had been shaded with Robin’s kindness. He’d opened up to Joan, and shared things he’d never thought to share with her before, having preferred to keep her and Ted on the outside of what he did for a living. He hadn’t realized that sharing it would allow them to understand why it drew him the way it did, and engender even more pride in him. 

He’d been able to open himself to his aunt, just as she’d been saying her farewells, and he was endlessly grateful for that. That he’d been able to demolish those barriers so that the last words she’d heard in this life had been his profession of love for her. 

And he knew Robin’s influence was the cause for the smile his aunt had worn as she’d slipped, peacefully, away. 

Lately he’d found himself considering going by a new name. 

The one [moniker](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/moniker?s=t) he’d never thought to add to the already expansive list. 

This new [appellation](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/appellation?s=t) he was considering didn’t fill him with fear, or the urge to run, or to desire to dissemble.

He was astounded at the [thaumaturgy](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/thaumaturgy#) this woman had worked on him. 

He knew now that he loved her more deeply than anyone he’d ever known, or ever would know.

Her quiet love and ease of spirit had filled his days with the kind of peace and happiness he’d never thought he’d deserved. 

She’d given him a life he’d not known was possible, even before he’d kissed her or held her, or gorged himself on her. 

But now that he had, he couldn’t countenance a day without her beside him, laughing at, and with, him.

Her face was the first thing he wanted to see each morning and the last he wanted to see as he went to sleep.

Her skin, the only skin he ever wanted to feel.

Her tears, the only tears he ever wanted to dry. 

This yearning to join his life with hers, in every way possible, to name himself her husband, to belong only to her, was astonishing.

Truly her [artless](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/artless?s=t) [prestidigitation](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/prestidigitation?s=t) was impressive.


End file.
